Roll back
Side view
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Ball roll-back

8 reps · beginner

Sitting tall with the knees bent, the feet flat and a small soft ball on the mat just behind the lower back, the arms reaching forward: the pelvis tucks and the spine rolls back until the lower back rests on the ball, about 40° behind vertical, then curls back up to sitting tall. The ball supports the bottom of the roll.

-39°Ankle dorsiflexion
97°Knee flexion
133°Hip flexion
2°Trunk from vertical
86°Arm to trunk
4°Elbow flexion
20Ankle spacing, cm
46Hand spacing, cm
3Knee outside ankle, cm
–Knee cave, ° inside toe line
–Load left / right, %
0Pelvis drop, cm

Load and joint demand

Bodyweight: no weights. Joint demand below is your own body's weight in this position.

Shoulder, per side
12 / 12

N·m now / peak over the rep.

Faults

Faults grow with knee bend and apply to lifts standing on the floor. The fault check flags a knee caving more than 10° inside the line of the toes and a load split beyond 60/40. Knee cave shows best in the front camera.

Body

Femur changes keep standing height fixed by shortening or lengthening the torso. Longer femurs force more forward lean in any squat.

Muscles worked

Abs and core
35 pts

Effort and your quota

2/10 effort2fatigue per set

8 slow, controlled reps. Pilates is practised for control, balance and mobility, never to failure, so this does not change with your limits.

Level: beginner. One round counts like light conditioning work: 35 core points.

Prime movers

Rectus abdominis, transversus abdominis, obliques, hip flexors (holding).

What to look for

  • Roll back only until you meet the ball; let it take a little of your weight.
  • Keep the chin softly tucked and the arms level.
  • Breathe out to curl back up.
How the model works, and its limits

One 3D skeleton drives both views. Segment lengths and widths are Winter's anthropometric ratios of height; segment masses and centre-of-mass positions follow Dempster's data. For free-standing lifts the whole-body angle is found numerically so the combined centre of mass of lifter and load sits over the middle of the foot. Arms and legs use two-link inverse kinematics with a pole direction. Rep timing follows a minimum-jerk profile.

Balance is quasi-static, so ballistic lifts are shown slowed down. Cable pull and pad support forces are not modelled. The spine is one rigid segment and joints have no range-of-motion limits or muscle forces.